


Dungeons and Towers

by regentzilla



Category: Dragon Quest IV
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-10 22:12:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4409705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regentzilla/pseuds/regentzilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alena was starting to realize how far back in her memory she'd buried her teenage years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dungeons and Towers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [areyougame](http://areyougame.dreamwidth.org) community! The prompt was "Kiryl/Alena: Secret liaisons - dungeons and towers".

Alena was starting to realize how far back in her memory she'd buried her teenage years.

It struck her one night completely out of the blue, while she was rummaging for some paper or another in the musty library storage. Behind stacks of yellowed books and tatty sheafs of paper sat a thick wooden box, heavy even to her strong arms. It was unadorned and unremarkable, with tarnished metal hinges and a closed but unlocked clasp holding it shut.

The dull outside belied what lay beneath the lid. Her claws, untouched since the final battle with Psaro, glistened in the moonlight from the high castle windows, the slime metal blades and burnished red-and-gold gloves nestled deep against purple velvet. Instinctively she pulled one on and turned it to and fro to see every angle— it fit her hand comfortably, but sat loose around her forearm.

Everything had been so chaotic after Psaro had been slain. She wondered at the time if it had really been worth it. Even more so than before, her life had become lessons and books and all the other boring things that her father and Borya deemed necessary for a future Tsarina to know. Mostly at Kiryl's behest she had boxed away her claws, with the promise that she would be able to use them again one day soon, once the chaos and paperwork of a newly free world had dwindled.

And now, here she was, nearly twenty and looking at her claws for the first time in years. How had so much time slipped between her fingers?

Before she knew what she was doing, both claws were on her hands and she was racing down the spiral staircase to the first floor of the castle, footsteps light and muffled by the rich red carpet, the echo swallowed by the tapestries staring down at her from the walls.

The door to Kiryl's room opened with such a cacophonous creak that he was sitting bolt upright in alarm even before Alena landed on the foot of his bed, setting the mattress bouncing. He groped clumsily with the mask covering his eyes, the light from the sputtering embers in the hearth turning his face into an ugly grimace as soon as he managed to untangle the mask from around his ears.

“What's happening? What's going on?” Kiryl paused in his fumbling and stared silently at Alena for an uncomfortable second. “Ale— Tsarevna?”

She nodded in earnest. Kiryl tugged the blanket up over his clothed chest.

“Oh, please,” she said, reaching out carefully with a clawed hand and tugging Kiryl out of bed by the arm. “Come on, get dressed!”

He stood unmoving, knees together and hands held awkwardly in front of his boxer shorts. After a few moments Alena realized what he was too polite and uncomfortable to ask for and turned around with a huff and a roll of her eyes.

“Tsarevna, it must be the middle of the night,” Kiryl mumbled, bleary and confused, and Alena heard him trip and stumble as he struggled to hurry and get his pants on.

“Yes, well,” Alena replied, hands on her hips and fingers tapping impatient, “it's important.”

They exited the castle through Alena's bedroom window, despite the fact that the castle guards likely would have let them out the front gates— it had been a long time since Alena had tried anything fishy. When Kiryl tried to ask what on earth was going on Alena just shushed him, dangling from the bedsheets tied end-to-end while he leaned carefully out of the window, knuckles white against the slate of the rock. It took more than a little coaxing to get him to actually shimmy down the makeshift rope.

The night was brisk and well-lit by the silvery moon, and Alena set off confidently, following the curve of the mountains towards the foothills and Taborov. Kiryl stumbled along after Alena's confident stride, fully awake after the nerve-wracking escape but still hesitant to follow her. He didn't speak again until they were well out of earshot of the castle.

“Tsarevna, where exactly are we going?”

“On a journey!” She said, waving a claw with such excitement at the landscape ahead of them that Kiryl leaned away for his own safety. “An adventure!”

“And it couldn't have waited until morning?”

Alena scoffed. “It's less of an adventure if it's not spur-of-the-moment. You're always reading books, you should know these things!”

He looked a little sheepish at that— she was well aware he liked to sneak novels into the stacks of dry records he spent so much time poring over and sorting through. Alena couldn't hold back a proud little smile. What a bad influence she had been.

“But what exactly is the point of the adventure? Is something wrong?” 

Alena turned and walked backwards so she could look at Kiryl. His eyes widened and his thick eyebrows tightened together slightly at the sudden attention.

“Don't tell me you don't miss it, just a little.”

Kiryl opened his mouth instantly, no doubt to say 'I don't know what you're talking about', but Alena frowned and he pursed his lips again.

“I don't miss the fighting,” he finally conceded, and Alena turned to walk forwards again, satisfied that he would continue. “And I certainly never want to get sick away from home again.”

“What about the rest?” Alena slowed her pace slightly so they could walk shoulder-to-shoulder.

“It was a bit thrilling,” he admitted, an embarrassed smile crossing his sharp features. “Even the dangerous parts, sometimes. It's strange, I never thought of myself as that kind of person... at first I was simply excited to... well.” His ears reddened and he coughed awkwardly. “Suffice it to say, it was a different beast than the one I had anticipated.”

Alena threw her head back and breathed in deeply, taking in the sight of the stars and the familiar weight of her claws. “It was exactly what I wanted it to be,” she said.

Their pace slowed to a comfortable walk. After a moment, Kiryl spoke. “All of it?”

Every exhausting day spent in tense silence and sleepless night spent in shared lodgings hung thick in the air between them. They both remembered a tournament nearly lost, blood on Alena's clothes and Kiryl's hands, the lonely panic of an empty castle and the embers of fury and fright that smouldered in Alena's chest as Kiryl promised her claws wouldn't be in storage for long.

“All of it,” she said, resolute.

The foothills stretched before them, the grass grazed short by wild creatures growing stubbly before being swept away altogether by dry, crumbly dirt. Alena soldiered on into the shadowy dips and short valleys and Kiryl followed, boots scuffing along behind her light and limber steps.

“Tsarevna, wait a moment!”

“Would it kill you to call me Alena?”

The degree to which Kiryl's face flushed suggested that it might. He'd gotten so much better at forgoing all the pomp and circumstance about their difference in rank, but there were a few things he remained perpetually hung up on. “I, ah... I've been practicing some magic, in my spare time, and there's something I learned recently... would you like to go on more of a proper adventure?”

Alena was nodding before he had finished speaking.

The spell he cast was one Alena had experienced dozens of times as a teenager, and it snagged her stomach in the same upward tug that it always did and squeezed an exhilarated laugh out of her throat. When they hit the ground at their destination, the abrupt stillness was more disorienting than the flurry of movement. Kiryl stumbled at the combination of magical exertion and vertigo and had to sit down for a moment.

Alena surveyed the landscape while Kiryl squatted with his head between his knees. There was a tower behind them and turbulent ocean on all sides of the tiny, flat peninsula. “Where are we?”

“I'm not sure,” Kiryl said, voice muffled. “We've been here before but I couldn't tell you what it's called.”

“We can get back, right?”

“Of course. I just... need a few moments first.”

Alena was already investigating the heavy wooden door that barred the entrance to the tower. It swung open with a vigorous shove, the weather-warped size of it squeezed into the stone frame being the only thing holding it shut.

Alena turned back to Kiryl, who had managed to stumble back to his feet, and flashed a wicked grin. “Shall we?”

There was something about the inside of the tower that stirred familiarity. Kiryl retrieved one of the torches bolted to the walls and lit it with a snap, then with his other hand sent out a few sparks of healing to soothe his accidentally singed fingers.

Alena started up the spiral staircase and Kiryl had no choice but to follow.

“Do you remember any of this?”

“I'm not sure.”

Their voices echoed damply up the stairs. The torch turned Alena's shadow into a monstrous beast, spreading wide up the walls and curling over the ceiling to loom above them.

“The thing about adventuring,” Alena said suddenly, and the flicker of the torch suggested Kiryl had jumped, “and fighting through dungeons and towers and all that, is that there's nothing like it.”

Kiryl hummed thoughtful.

“I feel so cramped in the castle,” she continued, “I didn't even realize it until I thought about getting out again.”

“I find a lot of comfort in the castle, if I may say so,” Kiryl muttered. The stairs continued to wind upwards— wherever they emerged it would be very high up. Both of them were beginning to grow breathless. “It's good to be close to friends, and close to the church.”

“But isn't it even better to get back to them after a long journey?”

The torch flickered as a gust of wind swept past them, almost blowing Alena's hat from her head and gusting her cape and tunic up for an instant. She was wearing leggings, of course, but she laughed out loud imagining the look that must have been on Kiryl's face.

“Hurry up, we're almost at the top!”

The view snatched away what breath they had left. The tower was lofty enough that it cleared the tops of the hills nearby, leaving an uninterrupted panorama of the sunrise's first pale glow over the ocean and the land. Alena rushed straight for the ramparts.

“W-we shouldn't stay too long, Tsarevna,” Kiryl said, standing very pointedly against the single round wall circling the entrance to the stairs.

“I wish I could stay here forever.”

“I-it's lovely, but... A— Tsarevna—!”

Alena had turned to face him and stepped so close that he had no choice but to shrink even further against the wall.

“You're going to take us back to the castle now, aren't you?”

“Y-yes?”

“And after that?”

Kiryl sputtered, trying to find the right answer. “W-well, I wouldn't mind going back to sleep...”

“And if I come knocking at your door tomorrow night?”

“I would like to note that Your Highness didn't knock at all,” he said quietly, which made Alena snort out a laugh, “but I suppose... adventures should be spur-of-the-moment, shouldn't they?”

Alena wordlessly shucked her claws from her hands, letting them clatter against the stone floor, and pulled Kiryl down by the front of his uniform into a kiss.

It was terrible, both of them having never kissed anyone before, and Kiryl made a squeaky noise of alarm that dragged on for far too long. When Alena broke away she was, admittedly, a little red in the face, but Kiryl looked ready to combust.

“I'm glad you agree,” she said.

For the next week Kiryl redoubled his efforts at the castle, sorting through documents and books at a pace Alena had never seen him achieve before. He had always been like that after being swept along with Alena's misdemeanors, even when they were young, even before he was ordained— some part of him was ever eager to believe in invisible presences that could sense his wrongdoings.

Regardless, he was the one who showed up at her bedroom door in the middle of the night the next time they made an escape, a bedsheet rope in his hands and a red flush tickling his ears.


End file.
